Jensen’s Patients Felt Everything: A True Crime Case

[0:04] You're in that dreaded chair the. [0:08] Light above you is fluorescent white you can't think about anything else but the vinyl under your hands is cool tacky the room smells like antiseptic and latex and that damn sound. The oral surgeon leans in. He's done this a thousand times. Now you've done this before too. Maybe not in this office. Maybe not with him. But somewhere, that sound of that drill, the gauze, the IV drip, the slow countdown, you know how this works he tells you to count backwards from 10 and you get to 7 maybe 6, and your eyelids get heavy and the world goes soft around the edges and you feel yourself sinking and you let yourself go because you trust this process and you trust him he's an oral surgeon, you trust the system that put a medical license on his wall and a DEA number on his prescriptions. [1:21] That trust, that moment when you surrender your consciousness to a person holding sharp instruments over your open mouth. It's one of the most vulnerable things a human being can do. Because in oral surgery, you can't close your mouth. You can't turn away. You can't speak. Now imagine this. The needle goes in. The drug enters your bloodstream. But it's only half of what the label says. The other half has been replaced with salt water. The doctor drained it earlier that morning and kept it for himself. You don't go fully under, not all the way. You go somewhere in between. A twilight where the pain is real, but your body won't respond. You feel the blade. You feel the pressure in your jaw. You can't speak. You can't move. You can't scream. [2:27] And the doctor? He knows. His own staff has told him patients are moaning during surgery, moving on the table, showing changes in blood pressure and heart rate. The signs are right there on the monitors. According to federal court records, he kept going for eight long, painful, agonizing months. [3:03] I'm Steve Rode. I spent 30 years as an investigative writer tracking financial criminals and years in emergency services as a police dispatcher, surveillance photographer, and chief pilot for public safety operations. This is True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard. Today, a 64-year-old oral surgeon in central Illinois. 8 months 99 identified victims a child who told his mother something I haven't been able to stop thinking about since I found this case, and a federal judge who asked a question at sentencing that every person listening to this will carry with them the next time they sit in that chair. [3:52] I don't think this case has been on a podcast before I don't think there's been one episode, not one show, but this story belongs here, and you need to hear it. Hey, if this is your first time hearing this show, this is what I do. Overlooked cases, zero prior podcast coverage, documentary-grade research, every story told like it matters because, damn it, it does. So subscribe now and you won't hear this story anywhere else. It's Rochester, Illinois, population 3,700. a quiet bedroom community eight miles east of Springfield on Route 29. Flat farmland stretches in every direction. Soybeans, cotton, winter wheat. It depends on the season. Churches, schools, a public library. The kind of place where people don't lock their front doors. They feel safe. Where if you need a recommendation for a dentist or an oral surgeon, you don't search online. You ask your neighbor at church. You ask the woman in the grocery store checkout line. [5:09] For more than 30 years, one name kept coming back. Dr. Philip Jensen. According to the Herald Review, Jensen began practicing dentistry in 1986. That's nearly four decades. He wasn't a general dentist filling cavities and cleaning teeth. No, he was a skilled and trained oral surgeon, one of the most specialized fields in dental medicine. The person you're referred to when the procedure is too complex for regular practice. Impacted wisdom teeth, corrective jaw surgery, dental implants, extractions, procedures that require IV sedation, procedures that require a patient to close their eyes, go under. And trust that when they wake up, everything will be as it should be. [6:10] His primary office was in Rochester, but Jensen also maintained satellite practices, including one 75 miles southeast. In Noga, a small Cumberland County farming community, about 1,600 people, Route 45 runs right through it. Grain silos mark the town edges, and the nearest alternative for an oral surgeon might be 40 miles in any direction. [6:44] In a place like this, if Philip Jensen was the oral surgeon who came to town, he wasn't just a medical provider. He was infrastructure in a place like this. Trust isn't optional. It's the foundation everything is built on. And for decades, by all available accounts, the arrangement worked perfectly fine. Patients came, procedures were performed, people healed, people referred him, and Jensen built a practice that stretched across multiple locations in central Illinois. He held a DEA registration, the federal license required to handle controlled substances like fentanyl. And according to his indictment, in the Central District of Illinois, he was the only DEA-registered practitioner at his office. And that's a detail worth remembering as we go. One person, one registration, one set of hands on access to the fentanyl supply. No second set of eyes with the authority to check. [8:00] Now, here's where the story turns from a profile of a trusted doctor into something entirely different. According to public records review during this investigation, Philip Jensen was operating under a mandated care, counseling, and treatment agreement with the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, the IDFPR. That's the state agency responsible for licensing and overseeing medical professionals in Illinois. [8:38] What that means is, in plain language, the state of Illinois knew Dr. Jensen had a substance abuse problem. They knew it, but they didn't strip his license. They didn't shut him down. They put them into a monitored treatment program, active supervision, a formal agreement that said, in effect, hey, we know you have a problem. And here's the framework that's supposed to keep your patients safe while you get help. And according to federal prosecutors in December 2019, while that treatment agreement was still in effect, Philip Jensen began stealing, stealing fentanyl from the patients laying unconscious in his chair. [9:37] I want to be very clear about what that means. Because you're going to hear the word addiction a lot in this episode. Jensen's own defense leaned on it, and addiction is real. And it destroys people. And I don't minimize that. But this is not a story about a man who lost control one night and made a desperate mistake. This is the story of a man who was being actively monitored by the very system designed to prevent exactly this scenario, and who chose methodically over eight months to steal from the most vulnerable people in his care. So hold that distinction because everything that comes next depends on understanding it. [10:42] I need to pause here because this is where the system question starts. Now, I've investigated institutional failures for 30 years as an investigative writer, and the question that keeps coming up, at least in financial crime or in health care fraud, but really in every system that's supposed to protect people, it's always the same. The system was watching. And why wasn't that enough? The IDFPR treatment agreement was supposed to be the safeguard, Jensen had a documented substance abuse problem The state knew They put monitoring in place And he operated on patients He performed invasive oral surgery On people who had no idea That their surgeon was in active treatment For the very addiction that made him dangerous. [11:43] The monitoring didn't fail because nobody was paying attention. It failed because monitoring, by design, trusts the person being monitored to participate in good faith. And when that person has spent 30 years learning how to present a trustworthy face in a profession built entirely on patients' surrendering consciousness, trust becomes the weapon. That's not a policy failure you can fix with more check-ins That's a design flaw baked into the system itself. [12:29] According to the federal indictment, Ann Jensen's own guilty plea Entered under oath on August 2, 2024 Before U.S. District Judge Lawless This is what Philip Jensen did. Every time, for eight months, to at least 99 patients... The method had seven steps. Ready? Step one. Before each surgery, Jensen took a single-use vial of phenol. These vials come with a safety cap, a tamper, evidence seal specifically designed to show whether the medication has been accessed. The cap breaks when you open it. That's the point. That's the safety mechanism. him. Jensen removed that cap. Step 2. He pierced the rubber septum of the vial with a syringe and extracted approximately half the fentanyl inside. [13:40] Step 3. He set the extracted fentanyl aside, not for another patient, but for personal use. Step 4 He pierced the vial a second time and injected saline, that's salt water to replace the volume he'd stolen so the vial would look full so the vial would feel right and so nobody checking the inventory would notice anything missing, Step 5 he took the safety cap the one that was engineered to never go back on, and he glued it on super glue on the tamper evident safety cap of a fentanyl vial every time for eight months, That detail tells you everything about what this was and what it wasn't. A safety cap is engineered so that once it's been opened, everyone downstream can see it's been compromised. It's the last line of defense between a tampered medication and a patient. Jensen glued them back shut. That's not a man in the grip of an uncontrollable urge. That's a man with a tube of superglue and a plan. [15:09] Step 6. He administered the half-strength fentanyl to the patients as their surgical anesthesia. The patient, trusting the label, trusting the doctor, trusting the system, went under or tried to. Half-strength fentanyl does not produce full sedation. The patient entered a kind of twilight, conscious to feel, but unable to communicate, and appearing unconscious in all other ways. Step 7. According to the DOJ sentencing press release, Jensen falsified the medical record to show that full-strength, unadulterated fentanyl had been administrated. And then he billed insurance for the full amount. I bet he thought he was clever. [16:08] According to the federal judgment, Jensen fraudulently billed Molina Healthcare of Illinois for $13,137 across multiple surgeries using those falsified records. He stole the drugs. He operated on partially conscious patients. He lied on the paperwork and he collected payment for every lie, As Judge Lawless stated his sentencing According to Law and Crime's coverage of the December 18th hearing Quote He made a profit from his lies. [16:48] The DOJ press release confirmed that, in total, Jensen stole more than 40 grams of fentanyl for personal use through this method. 40 grams! Over eight months from patients who walked into his office believing they could trust him and they would be cared for. [17:16] Here's a part of the case that I learned during an investigation, and I need to be careful with it because this is someone's child, and their dignity matters to me more than any story. So I'm going to share what the court record documents say and nothing more because what's documented is, frankly, enough. During the crime period between December 2019 and August 2020, a child was brought in for oral surgery at Jensen's practice. We don't know the exact date, and we don't know the child's age, but we know it's a child. A child in the dental chair, mouth open, trusting the doctor the way children trust doctors, completely, automatically, because a parent said it would be okay. My skin crawls just thinking about that. Telling your child everything will be okay. You can trust Dr. Jensen. Jensen administered the anesthesia, but according to federal prosecutors, it was diluted half-strength at best. The child was not fully sedated. The procedure happened. [18:44] And then afterward, after the chair went back up, after the instruments were cleaned, after whatever recovery period passed, that child looked at their mother and said two words. Felt everything! [19:09] According to the DOJ sentencing press release, that mother stood in the federal courthouse in Springfield, Illinois, on December 18th, four years after the surgery, and tearfully told the court what her child had said. For years of carrying those words, Of replaying the decision to bring her child to that office. Telling her child that they could trust that doctor. Those two words are why this case isn't just drug diversion. Damn it, it's violence through betrayal. Before I go further, what I'm about to describe comes from sworn testimony in a federal courtroom confirmed by the defendant himself. I also need to tell you something. When I was a kid, a child, I had a dentist who didn't believe in Novocaine. Decades of dental anxiety have followed, so I have a small sense of what dental pain without anesthesia feels like and what I experienced doesn't come close to what you're about to hear. [20:31] August 6, 2020, Midsummer, Central Illinois. Count 17 of the federal indictment names a patient identified only by her initials, SM. Out of 20 counts filed against Jensen, this is the only count where the words serious bodily injury resulted appear. The only count charged under 18 U.S.C. 1365A. Federal tampering with consumer products. SM came in for complex oral surgery. She was having all of her teeth and her mouth removed for the fitting of dentures, According to the prosecutor's factual basis Read aloud in the courtroom And confirmed by Jensen under oath, The procedure involved the extraction of multiple teeth And the grinding and smoothing of the bones in the jaw. [21:39] They're wrapped with nerves oh my god, without full sedation a patient is conscious for every cut every pull every instrument pressing into exposed bone and nerves, sm received jensen's diluted fentanyl half the medication she was supposed to get the other half was already in jensen's pocket. [22:10] Wait for it. During the surgery, SM regained consciousness. She was awake on the table while her teeth were being pulled and her jawbone was being reshaped. According to the change of plea transcript, and I'm quoting the prosecutor's own words here, and confirmed by Jensen's attorney. SM thought she was going to die during that process. She was in so much pain that she ended up shitting herself. [22:57] And then it got worse. According to the transcript, when Jensen realized SM was awake, oh, jeez, I can't believe this, he struck her in the head with a Minnesota retractor. That's a solid stainless steel instrument used to hold back the cheek during oral surgery. He hit her on the head with it. [23:22] According to the prosecutor's statement, government photographs documented a fairly large goose egg above her left eye from the contusion. And after the procedure, SM was taken to the hospital, where according to the prosecutor's factual basis, she was nearly intubated because of the severe swelling. The swelling from being struck with a surgical instrument was enough maybe, but doctors were concerned all the stuff that had happened in her mouth that her airway could close. And here's what makes this documented and undeniable. During the change of plea hearing on August 2nd, 2024, after the prosecutors read every one of those details out loud, every tooth, every bone, every moment of consciousness, the instrument strike, the hospitalization, Judge Lawless turned to Jensen and asked, Did you do what the government said you did? And Jensen, on the record, in court, under oath, said Yes, ma'am, He confirmed all of it. [24:48] According to the DOJ press release, this case first came to light because of Jensen's own dental staff. They began noticing something was wrong. Patients were moving during surgery. They were moaning. They were showing changes in blood pressure and heart rate on the monitors. These are the clinical signs of inadequate sedation, of pain breaking through what should have been just unconsciousness. The staff noticed and, according to Jensen's own admission during his August 2024, guilty plea confirmed in the DOJ press release. Jensen knew they had noticed. But that didn't stop him. He kept operating, he kept stealing, and he kept gluing. [25:47] The investigation that followed involved four agencies working together. The Drug Enforcement Administration's Diversion Unit out of the Springfield Resident Office. The division specifically tasked with investigating controlled substances diverted from legal channels. And there was the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations. The local sheriff's office and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. It took approximately 18 long months. And when agents executed their search, according to the government's exhibit list filed in the case, they recovered approximately 40 drained fentanyl vials from a Sharps disposal container at Jensen's practice. [26:45] 40 vials, each one representing a patient. Each one pierced twice Once to steal and once to replace, Each one glued shut And on at least one of those recovered vials, according to the same exhibit list Investigators found blood, Transferred from the hands that had performed surgery After draining the medication. [27:21] It was a 28-degree bitter wind day in Illinois, February 7th, 2022. Rochester, Illinois. Eighteen months after Jensen's last crime, that we know of, a federal grand jury returned a 20-count indictment. Eight counts of drug diversion. Eight counts of acquiring a controlled substance by fraud. One count of tampering with consumer products resulting in serious bodily injury. Three counts of making false statements relating to health care matters. Like the vials, the case was unsealed. Jensen appeared before a magistrate judge for arraignment and pleaded, not guilty. The prosecution team, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Doug McMire and Sierra Senior Moore, Jensen's defense attorney Daniel Fultz. The trial was set for April 5, 2022. The maximum penalty if every count ran consecutively, as stated on the records by A. U. S. A. McMire, was 78 years in federal prison and a $1.75 million fine. [28:51] Jensen posted a $10,000 personal recognizance bond. No cash required, and he surrendered his passport. And he walked out of the federal courthouse into the February cold. Free. On conditions. For now. The story made the news. Not national. Not yet. But local outlets covered it. And online, a practicing dentist named Dr. Tony, who runs a YouTube channel called Dentists Behaving Badly, covered the case when the indictment dropped. This dentist clearly has a substance abuse problem, and I hope that this doctor can get the help that he needs and become rehabilitated so he can live the life that he really wants to live instead of living the way that he has been, stealing medication from his patients and giving them half doses. But Dr. Toney also said something else that day. A small group of dentists allow entitlement, greed, and personal proclivities to overshadow their responsibility to their patients, the profession, and society. Entitlement. Remember that word. [30:18] What followed was two and a half years of pretrial freedom that tells its own story about who Philip Jensen believed himself to be. And about how the system treated him. We've covered cases on this show where defendants sit in county jail for months waiting for trial. Where bail is set at figures that working people just can't make. Where pretrial detention is the default, not the exception. [30:47] Jensen posted a casual $10,000 personal recognizance bond. No cash required for a 20-count federal indictment involving drugging patients and assaulting a woman in his dental chair. And he walked out of that federal courthouse and went home. And then he started asking for favors. Eight continuances pushed the trial date from April 2022 all the way to August 2024. four of which had been firm trial settings. Eight times, 99 victims waited for justice. But the continuances were only part of it because according to a court order entered on May 29th, 2024, the record showed that Jensen had his own conditions of bond modified 17 times, 17, to travel or otherwise enjoy himself and minimize the conditions of his release. [31:52] Kansas City for his mother-in-law's 85th birthday. Northern Arkansas for a camping trip at Bull Shoals Lake. Colorado for a ski trip and on and on and on. Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, St. Louis for his wife's 60th birthday. 17 modifications while 99 victims waited. [32:19] He was trying to take a show dog to a competition in Wisconsin when the court said, nope, that's it. By May 2024, according to the same court order, the government told the court that Jensen was having difficulty locating an expert witness for trial. His defense after two and a half years? Still not ready. But the court's patience was not unlimited. In October 2022, Jensen's bond conditions were modified. His curfew was eliminated and replaced with GPS monitoring through a system called SmartLink. Jensen testified under oath during that hearing. [33:10] Then on April 5, 2023, exactly one year after his original trial date was set, the U.S. Probation Office reported to the court that Jensen was not in compliance with his SmartLink GPS monitoring. There were concerns, according to the court, about his responsiveness to the monitoring system and about his relationship with his supervising officer. According to the court document, Magistrate Judge Karen McNock reviewed Jensen's full pretrial history. She admonished him on the record, and she restricted his travel to only one county. The same county where his victims lived. A sealed, amended release order was filed. That was 14 months before everything collapsed. By September 2023, the government filed a Notice of Expectation of Trial The prosecution was pressing forward, and in May 2024, for the first time in over two years of proceedings The government formally objected to yet another continuance, The objection was overruled. Trial was reset one final time to August 19, 2024 four. [34:36] But Judge Lawless, according to the magistrate's order, indicated that date was firm and that further requests for continuances would not be looked upon favorably. The message was unmistakable. The government was ready, and Jensen was running out of room. [35:03] What I'm about to tell you comes from a sealed motion filed by the government that was later unsealed on July 25, 2024. Every detail is from that federal filing. [35:18] One of the conditions of Jensen's bond from the very first day, condition 7G, was this. He was to avoid all contact, direct or indirect, with any person who is or may be a victim or witness in the investigation or prosecution. The motion identifies a government witness, a former employee of Jensen's, who was expected to testify at the upcoming trial about his conduct, about patients in distress, and about a confession Jensen had made. And the filing calls her Witness 1. On July 6, 2024, Witness 1 was at home, and she looked outside and saw a vehicle parked in front of her house. According to the filing, the vehicle bore the vanity license plate Swishy 4. It belonged to Jensen's wife. Witness 1 knew that plate. She knew that vehicle. She had been given Jensen rides home in her own car when she worked for him. And he lived more than four miles from her house. When she waved towards the vehicle, it immediately drove away. [36:40] Then came July 25th, according to the motion, while witness one was driving to work that morning, Jensen's truck appeared behind her and began following. At a stoplight, he pulled alongside her vehicle, rolled down his window, and told her that her taillight was allegedly out. [37:02] Wisely, smartly, she photographed him through her window. He continued to follow her past her workplace, and when she circled back later, his truck was parked at an adjacent business, a dental practice, backed into the space, positioned so her workplace and her parking spot were visible from the driver's seat. The filing notes that in Witness 1's experience, Jensen typically pulled front-first into parking spaces. This time he was backed in facing her work. And Witness 1 called the Springfield Police Department. 911, Mature Emergency Police. Meanwhile, the same filing documents three separate GPS check-in violations in a 10-day stretch. On July 18th, after missing his check-in and ignoring a text message and two phone calls from his probation officer, Jensen finally responded at 8.42 p.m. His text quoted in verbatim in the court filing. I have not received any notification. My phone has not chimed once. I'm sitting here watching the RNC and your system is a mess, unfortunately. [38:25] On July 29th, 2024, Magistrate Judge McNaught issued a detention order. Jensen's bond was finally revoked. The order found by clear and convincing evidence that no condition or combination of conditions could reasonably assure the safety of others. And the court wrote that Jensen had been provided every, every single opportunity to manage his behavior. And that he violated the conditions of his release and that he had shown, and this is directly from the detention order, disrespect to the probation office, the prosecutorial system, his own counsel, and the court. Sounds like the guy was just simply being an asshole. An entitled asshole. Jensen was remanded to federal custody. [39:24] Think about the timeline. For two and a half years, Philip Jensen fought these charges. Eight continuances, 17 bond modifications. And then he stalked a witness. And eight days later, he folded. Eight days from arrest to guilty plea. After two and a half years. That's not a change of heart that's a man who ran the math with the stalking on his record his credibility was shot gone, any jury would hear about the witness intimidation any jury would hear the GPS violations the text about the Republican National Committee the RNC the disrespect to the court, The jury's admonishment. Jensen didn't plead guilty because he was sorry. Now, he probably pleaded guilty because he had nothing left to fight with. This case went uncovered for years. No podcast, no documentary, 99 victims in silence. If the system failed these people, someone you know could be next. So share this episode. Send it to someone who needs to hear it. That's how these overlooked cases stop being invisible. [40:54] Springfield, Illinois The Richard H. Durbin Federal Building Eight miles from Jensen's Rochester practice According to the change-of-plea transcript, Jensen appeared with his attorney, Daniel Foltz, and Mark Wyckoff. AUSA's McMeyer and Senior Moore represented the government. Judge Lawless placed Jensen under oath. [41:27] She asked his full name, Philip, two L's, M. Jensen, his address before custody. He was born in Seattle, Washington, education past high school, including residency training, 13 years of training. She asked his age. According to the transcript, Jensen answered 63, 64 in September. She asked about medications. He said he was taking Prozac for anxiety and mood stabilization and Lipitor for cholesterol. 15, 16 years on both. And then she walked him through every charge, every element, every potential penalty. And then she asked, are you pleading guilty because you are guilty? And the transcript records his answer. Short and sweet. Yes, ma'am. Are you doing this of your own free will? I am, ma'am. [42:39] Seven counts. Guilty, ma'am. Guilty, ma'am. Guilty, ma'am. Guilty, ma'am. Guilty, ma'am. Guilty, ma'am. Guilty, ma'am. [42:48] The court accepted the plea. Sentencing was set for December. And the proceeding concluded at 11.11 a.m. Jensen was returned to the custody of the United States Marshal. Local television station WCIA covered the guilty plea that week. And here's how the news reported it. A Rochester dentist has pleaded guilty to stealing fentanyl from patients. A judge says the drugs were supposed to be used to manage pain during surgery. 63-year-old Phillip Jensen owned and operated a practice in Springfield. He specialized in oral and maxillofacial surgery. Prosecutors say from 2019 to 2020, Jensen would take the fentanyl, remove the safety caps, and withdraw at least half of the single-use vial. He would then refill it with saline and glue the caps back on to hide what he'd done. Jensen admitted his surgical assistant started to notice patients moaning and moving and saw a change in their blood pressure and heart rates during surgery. He faces up to 78 years behind bars. 78 years. That was the maximum. But notice what the newscast didn't mention. The child, SM. That stainless steel Minnesota retractor. The stocking. The Seventeen Bond Modifications. [44:16] The public got the summary. The courtroom got the truth. Let me stop here for a moment, because I've investigated criminals for 30 years, and there's a pattern in this case that I want to make sure you see. This case isn't really about addiction. I mean, addiction was the mechanism. This is a story about entitlement. I mean, look how Jensen behaved after his arrest. 17 bond modifications Dog shows, ski trips He treated his pretrial release like it was a travel itinerary When probation flagged him He texted back Their system was a mess, And when the trial date was finally set firm He drove to a witness's house. [45:07] In my experience, people who operate from positions of institutional trust, doctors, executives, officers, they develop a belief that the rules don't apply to them. Not as a conscious thought, as an assumption. Jensen assumed the system would keep accommodating him, and for two and a half years it did. Stalking wasn't a mistake. It was the same entitlement that let him steal fentanyl from unconscious patients. I can do this and nothing will happen. Yeah, yeah, until something did. [45:57] It's 41 degrees, it's overcast. The sun sets at 4.30 p.m. The winter solstice was three days away, the shortest day of the year, darkness pressing in by late afternoon. The crime had begun in December darkness, five years earlier. They would be answered in December darkness. Philip Jensen, now 64 years old, was brought from federal custody into the courtroom of Judge Lawless for sentencing. Best judge name ever, by the way. According to the DOJ sentencing press release, the government presented evidence of Jensen's lengthy history with addiction, his previous efforts at treatment, and in the words of the press release, quote, His ultimate decision to prey upon his patients by stealing the drugs that were meant to provide them with comfort during their surgeries. Unquote. They presented evidence of the elaborate steps he took to disguise his theft. And they presented the voices of his victims. [47:15] A mother stood in that courtroom, and according to the DOJ press release, she tearfully told the court what her child had said. Felt everything! [47:30] Keep thinking about the courage that took. To stand in a federal courtroom, face the person who hurt your child, and speak. The government also presented the case of SM, count 17, the woman who came in for dentures and regained consciousness while her teeth were being extracted and her jawbones ground smooth. She was in so much agony that her body gave out on the table. She shit herself. Who was struck in the head with a stainless steel retractor when her surgeon realized, hey, she's awake. And then rushed to the hospital, where doctors nearly had to intubate her because of the swelling, all while Jensen billed her insurance for the full-strength medication she never got. [48:26] According to the DOJ sentencing press release, Judge Lawless rejected Jensen's argument that he was somehow less culpable than the average drug dealer. She drew a distinction that cut through every mitigation argument Jensen's defense had offered, A drug dealer, she noted, provides drugs to knowing and willing participants People who choose to buy, who understand what they're getting, Jensen provided diluted drugs without the consent or knowledge of his victims, His patients didn't choose to feel pain, to be in agony, and get half-strength anesthesia. They didn't consent to being conscious during jaw surgery. They trusted him, and he stole from that trust while they were helpless in his chair and under his control. She noted that Jensen was a physician who used his position of trust to hurt others. She noted that he had profited, that he had billed insurance for medications he had stolen and diluted. That in the words reported by law and crime, he made a profit from his lies. [49:45] Judge Lawless imposed a sentence of 180 months in federal prison. Fifteen years. All counts running concurrent. Four years of supervised release upon completion. $200,000 fine restitution of $5,775 to the Department of Justice for the expert witness the government was forced to hire. [50:15] Jensen's medical license, that had already been suspended in 2022, was now permanently gone. And when the sentencing hit the internet, the reaction was immediate. A content creator covering the case put it simply. The dentists are shaking, and this is an evil one. So former dentist Philip M. Jensen of Springfield, Illinois, is sentenced to 15 years in prison Another creator, Shawnee B., said something that echoed what every patient in Jensen's practice was probably thinking. Baby, just because they got a doctor in front of their name don't mean that they're honest, and I don't want you to become a victim. And then, according to the DOJ sentencing press release, Judge Lawless concluded the hearing with a question. Not a statement, not a lecture, just a question. If you can't trust your doctor, who can you trust? U.S. Attorney Gregory Harris said it this way, People are never as vulnerable as when they place their faith in a health care provider to not only treat their condition, but to administer anesthesia and pain medication during that treatment. Jensen abused that faith and hurt others in the process. [51:43] There were 99 identified victims and however many others who walked out of Jensen's office assuming the pain during their procedure was normal, never knowing it wasn't. Never knowing their surgeon had stolen half their anesthesia. And they paid for it. In pain, in trauma, and in years of wondering why their surgery hurt so damn much more than anyone said it should. The 99 are the ones the investigators found. The actual number could be higher. We're never going to know. [52:23] Philip Jensen is currently serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California. 1,800 miles from home, 1,800 miles from the dog shows, the camping trips, and the 17 bond modifications he thought would never end. The court had recommended a Pacific Northwest facility with a residential drug abuse program. And the Bureau of Prisons sent him to Lompoc instead. His dental license is gone, his practice is closed, his freedom is gone for the next 15 years, and everything he spent decades building. He traded for at least 40 grams of fentanyl and the belief that no one would ever hold him accountable. He was entitled. But at the end of the day, he lost everything. [53:25] Shawnee B. said one more thing in her coverage that stayed with me. And it's already hard enough to get yourself up to go to the dentist because people are scared of this type of procedure because they don't know what people are doing when they're under. She's right. And isn't that the point? I mean, the next time you're in the chair, the light above you, the antiseptic smell, the slow count backward from 10, remember this. Not because it's likely to happen to you, but because it happened to 99 people who never expected it either. And remember what Judge Lawless asked. If you can't trust your doctor, who can you trust? This has been True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard. I'm Steve Rode. 99 people went through something no one else should ever have to experience. A child felt everything. A mother waited four years to say it, and this is how victims stop being invisible. Someone has to tell their story, and someone else has to listen. [54:35] So, whatever platform you're listening on, hey, give me a five-star review. Leave a review. Share it with one person. That's enough. But if you were subscribed to the show email list at True Crime Unheard when this show dropped, I sent you the secret link to the behind-the-scenes court records so you could look at them yourself. New episodes drop regularly, so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next court document drop. [55:11] Until next time, stay safe, stay curious, stay subscribed, and by all means, stay awesome. Yeah. See ya. Cases you ain't heard about.